Even if you become a politician, you cannot do what you set out to do without support from others. They will ask you to your face what kind of profit they'll be making off of your changes or reforms. Why should they support you? What's in it for them? If they don't like the answer, you might as well give up because it's not happening. There is no such thing as "this idea is objectively good, let's put it in practice".

I don't know when it started but it's part of the government's culture now. It's common knowledge too: people talk about institutionalized corruption openly, citing investigations, comments by officials and even judges. It's a systemic problem and I have no idea what people are supposed to do in order to fix something like that. It's very demotivating and demoralizing.

This is actually a huge reason why lots of people want the military dictatorship back. The logic is (1) the military cares about Brazil and believes in the country's potential, and (2) they will do whatever they believe is necessary to make the country great, regardless of any individual's interests. Our history with dictatorships doesn't quite validate that logic, obviously.